Trail Blazers luminary CJ McCollum recently appeared on Jeff Teague’s Club 520 podcast. He shared multiple anecdotes from his nine-plus seasons in Portland. Watching the episode made me nostalgic for Blazers teams of consequence led by two guys who were easy to root for. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?
Perhaps my favorite moment of the interview came near the interview’s end when the hosts brought up a gem from the COVID lockdown days that I had blocked
out long ago. It all came flashing back when they played a video clip of Damian Lillard and McCollum taking over the NBA’s Instagram account during a time when the league was desperate for content.
The world has changed dramatically in the five-plus years since March 11, 2020. That night, Rudy Gobert became the first NBA player to test positive for COVID-19. Back then, Gobert played for Utah. Americans had watched COVID-19 slowly shut down other countries. Many wondered how the virus might affect sport. And, two days after he famously mocked cleanliness protocols by touching all the mics during a media session, Gobert’s pregame test came back positive. Chesapeake Arena was already full of fans. The Jazz and Thunder were moments from tip-off.
Thunder GM Sam Presti told two team VPs, “Look, don’t let them tip the ball.”
Presti’s henchmen raced onto the court and huddled with referees. And, before long, Thunder public address announcer, Mario Nanni, took the microphone to say the game had been postponed.
The saying “Ball is life” was perhaps never more true than that night. Gobert was the first domino to fall. Soon, the NBA season was suspended and sports leagues all over the world halted games.
And the Club 520 crew reminded me how before you could say BOOM-shaka-laka, Blazers fans – who had been packing Moda to see the second best backcourt in basketball – were instead sitting at home watching Damian Lillard and McCollum talk about CJ’s new dog on Instagram Live.
McCollum gave fans the Brooke Olzendam moment we didn’t know we needed at a time when there were no live sports of any kind to bring us all together. You can see the teammate’s camaraderie and youth in that split screen clip. The two came of age in the unrelenting gaze of the public eye. Their mothers were friends. By that time they had enjoyed some of life’s greatest triumphs on the court and its most heartbreaking moments off it. Seeing them online together when the world had stopped is all the more poignant in hindsight.
When the league suspended the season, Portland was fresh off a 2019 run to the Western Conference Finals. In a second round series for the ages, McCollum had dropped 41 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 steals in the quadruple overtime Game 3 versus Denver before dropping the hammer on the Nuggets with a dominant 37-point decisive game seven. That game was the team’s last victory before it was mercilessly swept by the Warriors in the Western Conference Finals.
The 2020 campaign was a disappointment to those that hoped the team would build on its playoff success. When Gobert tested positive, and the season ran aground, Portland sat in ninth place in the West with a 29-37 record. Then as now, the group was beset by injuries and never quite came together. While the Blazers would rebound to make a brief splash in the NBA bubble, it would never contend for a title.
Perhaps we couldn’t see it then, but that 2019 iteration of the Blazers was the high water mark for the Lillard & McCollum led teams. Lillard was a perennial All-Star and All-NBA selection. He is number one on Portland’s all-time list for three-pointers made. McCollum is a distant number two. Together they formed one of the NBA’s most lethal backcourts.
Blazer’s Edge diehards recall McCollum’s tenure in Portland well. The Trail Blazers selected the sharp shooting two guard out of Lehigh with the tenth pick of the 2013 draft. He was an older rookie who had spent four years in the NCAA ranks.
He told Teague and friends how his age made him feel that rookie hazing was beneath him. Rather than running errands for veterans, he roasted them in practice while tirelessly talking trash. A meeting with Portland general manager Neil Olshey encouraged him to come correct.
“Neil called me into the office. He was like, ‘CJ, I need them to like you.’”
So, McCollum began running out to buy donuts for older players.
He was often injured in his first few years in Portland, shuffling between what was then known as the D-league and the Blazers bench. Then, Wes Matthews popped his Achilles and Aron Afflalo left town, clearing the way for him to become a starter in the 2015-16 season.
McCollum told Teague he called his brother Errick and said, “I’m about to kill.”
This is where Michael Holton would probably say something about the intersection between opportunity and preparation.
In the starting role, McCollum went from averaging 6.8 points per game in the 2015 season to 20.8 points per game in 2016. He won the league’s Most Improved Player award.
It led to tremendous financial success. At the end of his rookie contract, the kid from Canton, Ohio signed a four-year extension worth $106 million.
“I was shaking when I was signing,” he told the interviewers. “I had a fear of going broke my whole life.”
With McCollum stamped as a starter, the Blazers were always a fun watch. Playoff success on the other hand was elusive.
Trail Blazers’ Playoff Record with McCollum as a Starter
- 2014-2015: Lost in Western Conference Semifinals (4-1 to Clippers).
- 2015-2016: Lost in Western Conference Semifinals (4-2 to Warriors).
- 2016-2017: Lost in Western Conference First Round (4-2 to Warriors).
- 2017-2018: Lost in Western Conference First Round (4-0 to Pelicans).
- 2018-2019: Reached Western Conference Finals (beat Thunder 4-1, lost to Warriors 4-0).
- 2019-2020: Lost in Western Conference First Round (4-1 to Lakers).
- 2020-2021: Lost in Western Conference First Round (4-2 to Nuggets).
Defense was a perennial liability with Lillard and McCollum sharing the court, and by 2022, the buddy movie was over. General manager Joe Cronin shipped McCollum to New Orleans.
The former Blazer told the Club 520 hosts it was an amicable divorce:
“We had some great conversations about the process, where I was going to go, teams that we kind of talked through, and Joe did a great job of kind of orchestrating that trade in the midst of you know, some chaotic times right. Obviously, it’s post-COVID. There’s a lot going on, and I had a say in where I was going. So, I can’t complain about that departure. It was a great time. And one day I’ll go back and you know, maybe do what I do again, or my jersey being in the rafters, and we’ll just enjoy those times.”
This is McCollum’s twelfth season in the NBA. He is the second oldest player on the Washington Wizards and is averaging 19.6 points per game. He says “[Portland] is still home to this day.” He and his wife own a winery in Yamhill County. They spend the NBA offseason in Oregon. He still watches the Blazers on League Pass.
